Natural Choices for Green Camping

If you’re considering summer camps for your kids, you might want to give some thought to those with an ecological orientation. There are a number of camps that help kids understand the rapidly changing natural environment and their role in it.

These camps are upgrading outdoor living skills and nature study programs to emphasize environmental science and consciousness-raising things like recycling and energy saving. Whether you want a program that is six-weeks or six-hours long, whether your kid is 7 or 17, North County has a variety of public and private eco-sensitive camping choices.

Kathi Madjeski, director of outdoor education for YMCA camps Marston and Raintree near Julian, knows how to combine all these eco-elements. “Very few times has a child found himself so responsible for an entire group,” she said. “If he leaves a candy wrapper around, the next day that brand is not available at the camp store. So they learn that if one of us does something that negatively affects our environment, it affects us all.”

Raintree Ranch emphasizes horsemanship. But these days kids are being made more aware of the horse as an animal and a source of “bi-products” rather than just a recreational vehicles, according to Madjeski. “The first few days the kids aren’t real thrilled about their responsibilities for cleaning out the stalls. But then peer pressure sets in as they note who’s not doing a good job and they lean on one another.” The “bi-product” is used on the lawns at the camp.

As one might expect of a YMCA camp, the spiritual aspects of living and working in nature are not neglected. “Our goal is to encourage good stewardship,” Madjeski says.

Camp Stevens, a year-round camp at Julian operated by the Episcopalian Diocese of San Diego and Los Angeles, also encourages the role of good stewardship. Congregations send groups for weeklong environmentally oriented retreats.

The summer program, while including the traditional sports and camping elements, has an emphasis on “problem solving and caring for the earth,” according to Peter Bergstrom, camp director.

Driving from Julian toward the sea to the other end of Route 78, one is reminded why North County is such a marvelous place to gain insights about nature and the environment. Where else can you go from an alpine climate to a subtropical one, simply by releasing the hand brake of your car? And as we all know these days, we humans have a lot to do with how and whether the trees in the mountains and the birds at the beach will survive into the next decade.

North County estuaries, such as Bataquitos Lagoon, are the sites of a program organized by Seacamp. Marine ecology is the focus of the six-day residential program Mike Yeakle runs for 7th through 12th graders. At night they stay at the UCSD campus, and by day they are in, on, and under the waters of North County’s coast and wetlands, learning about marine science careers. “This is not a surfing camp,” Yeakle said.

Your kids don’t have to be as old or scholastically focused as the Seacamp crowd to get involved in marine eco-fun during the summer. “Mudflat Mysteries” and “Wetland Wonders” are some of the Scripps Aquarium day programs which bring hundreds of kids as young as seven to San Elijo Lagoon, south of Solana Beach. The program introduces the kids to the inhabitants of endangered wetlands. Who besides a 2nd grader has the wits to walk up to an innkeeper worm and say hello?

Liz Love, Scripps’ Educational Program coordinator, described the course titled “Spineless Wonders” this way: “You learn how barnacles catch plankton with their legs and how sea cucumbers expel their insides to protect themselves.”

As a parent, you’ll be spared this firsthand experience when you drop your kid off for one or another of the dozen or so program Scripps offers. For some of them you’ll have to drive your child to places outside North County, but most are nearby.

If there are any children reading this column and you want to talk about it to your parents--be kind. Or better yet, tell them you want to study science all summer. All they have to do is drive you over to meet the group at the lagoon. It’ll work like a charm.

On the other hand, if you’re a parent and your daughter has been pressuring you to go to horse-camp this summer, don’t let on about the ecological aspects of the experience. Just say yes. She’ll learn her eco-lesson and thank you for it.

MORE ON CAMPS

To get the most desirable summer camp reservations, start inquiring now. Here are some North County eco-oriented programs:

* Camp Stevens in Julian, 765-0028

* Camp Marston and Raintree Ranch in Julian, 765-0642

* Seacamp residential marine science programs using various North County natural sites, 571-0449

* Scripps day-camp programs including field trips to North County wetlands, 534-8665.

For further information on day camps and residential camps and their specific emphasis, call American Camping Assn. at 1--800--428-CAMP, between 9-5 EST. The California-based Western Assn. of Independent Camps also publishes a directory; call (310) 985-8070.